Young Alex
by Lord Casskey
Summary: WWII. Young Alexander goes to war because he wants to be a hero, but he finds something much more important. Note that there's a difference between Girlycard and Alucard proper. Rated for Themes.


Author's Note: I do not own the rights to Hellsing, the bible, the Lee-Enfield, or the French language. I am receiving no monetary gain from this.

It was a long time ago., when people still called him "Young Alex", before he could grow a beard, back when he could never have considered himself "Priest Material", exactly.

He fought for the British, though he was Scottish himself. He had wanted to go to war; he wanted to be a Hero. Not just for the girls.

Alright, a little for the girls, (He was a young man, after all) But he wanted to be a Hero because he had a good heart, and because he was selfish enough then to want recognition for it.

He still has two things from those days. He couldn't get rid of them if he wanted to, and he does want to.

He lied about his age. Looking back, he realized that the recruitment officer might have known, and not cared. They needed soldiers, and young Alex with his sloppily cut hair and Scottish brogue and tall, lanky, not entirely together figure was as good as anyone else. He could hold a rifle. He probably couldn't use one, but that's what they had bayonets on the end for.

The first battle, he had to use the bayonet. The rusty old Lee-Enfield's previous owner hadn't been very attentive to his weapon's needs. It fired once, then misfed the second cartridge.

The other man noticed him, then turned and squeezed the trigger.

Young Alex didn't feel the bullet scratch his face, nor did he feel himself moving forward, faster than he had ever moved. He didn't feel anything but the sick sound of his bayonet sticking the other man's stomach, didn't see anything but the look on the other man's face as it ceased to represent him as anything other than meat in a human shape.

It was only a scratch, but medical supplies were in short supply, and the bandages had to go to people who really needed them. He didn't mind. He felt sick. He didn't feel like a Hero. He felt like a killer, the scar on his face marking him for all to see.

He couldn't talk for another few weeks, which was fine with him. He things. Magazines.

His favorite possession for a long time since was a copy of some French novel, he would never figure out how to properly pronounce the title, with the back burnt off.

The fact that the book had no ending didn't really bother him. If he lived long enough to read the whole thing, translating spare words with his English-to-French phrasebook, he would be happy with no ending.

He read in the dark, when all the others were asleep. He had to strain his eyes, something that he would bemoan later in life, but it was worth it to have somewhere else to go, somewhere that didn't smell like gunpowder and blood and sweat.

He constantly found himself looking for stories in English, although they were few and far between and he could only carry so much.

One day, while scraping through the crushed bookshelves in the back of what used to be a shop, he spotted what would become the two most influential forces on his life.

The book had a burnt cover, but it was comfortably thick, the way that a child wants a storybook to feel. The word "The" was legible on the cover, and that was good enough for him. English. Thick. Yes.

Then, across the room, he saw her.

He hadn't seen a girl since he was last in the city that he called home, so far from there. There were the prematurely aged females he had met in the last city, who offered themselves to the big, strong soldiers from overseas, for a price. They hadn't been interested in the quiet boy-man with his giant red scar, and he barely even noticed them.

But this was a _girl, _with beautiful long black hair and eyes the color of rust. She wore a man's suit and a pill-box hat, and held a Thompson submachine gun in the crook of her arm like it was just as natural to her as jewelry to some other girl.

She smiled at him, an expression he hadn't seen with genuine intent behind it since he couldn't remember.

"I-I'm Alex." He stammered, finding his voice lighter than he remembered.

"It's nice to meet you, Alex." She replied. "Would you like to take a walk with me? I'm new here, and I don't know my way around."

"S-Sur-okay." he got up and walked to the door, left redundant by the much larger hole in the wall next to it, then opened it for her. She seemed amused.

She took his arm, and the mismatched pair strolled down the street, avoiding the blast marks and bodies like children avoiding cracks in the sidewalk.

They walked, they talked, and he went back to his battalion when it got dark. He never asked her who she was, or what her name was, or why she was there. He just cared that she was.

Whenever he had a few hours to himself, he wandered off to search for books, and found her there. Just like how you never realize that a dream is a dream till you wake, he never thought to question that she always knew when he was around. He supposed that she could have been a dream, but he didn't actually mind if she was.

One day, she touched the huge red gash on his face, and leaned in close to ask him how he got it.

He told her, exactly as he remembered it, with no embellishments. He wouldn't lie to her. It would ruin it.

She smiled. "I think you're a hero." She sighed. "You would've been one where I come from. It's a place where the ground is so drenched in blood that the dirt is still red in some places. They fought so many battles there." She looked out at the landscape of broken buildings, smiling faintly to herself. "Sometimes I wonder why I miss it."

She smiled to him. "I'm glad you're not there. You wouldn't like it."

She got up and dusted herself off, somehow leaving the immaculate white suit free of every single speck. "Will you come with me?" She asked. "I have something that I'd like to show you."

He nodded.

She helped him up onto the rooftop, with almost no effort despite his much greater size. He didn't say anything about it.

She made a grand gesture, like a child bringing its toys close, covering all of the wreckage and carnage, the city itself bleeding from the sheer violence of the events taking place inside it.

"Isn't it beautiful?" she asked, staring at the destruction with wonder in her eyes.

"The Sky, yes." He replied. "the carnage and destruction? No. I was down there, you know. I helped cause it."

"And I think you're a sweetie for helping." she said, planting a kiss on his cheek. "But don't you see the poetry to your actions? Don't you think that everyone should take pleasure in what they do?"

"No." He replied. "It's not what I would call poetry."

She smiled to herself, the way that a sad little girl who knows that she's right but can't prove it would.

"You've never asked who I am." she said.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because it would ruin it if I knew. And because you wouldn't answer if I asked." Alex replied to The Girl.

She smiled again. "Do you love me?"

"I-I suppose I do, yes." he blushed.

"You look so nice when you blush. You can hardly see the scar." She looked out at the stars.

"You don't love this war?"

"No. I don't."

"Okay." She play-frowned to herself. "I'll see what I can do about that."

They got down off of the roof, and she walked in the opposite direction as he went back to camp.

She waved.

He didn't see her for several more weeks, outside of dreams, both waking and sleeping.

Until one last time.

His commanding officer came to them one day and said that The War was ending.

"Why?" asked Young Alex.

"Hitler's dead!" the Liutenant exclaimed happily. "He's topped himself!"

"Who?" asked Alex.

Some time later, he saw her for the last time.

It was the night before they shipped out for home. He was on top of the inn that they were rooming in. There wasn't enough space inside for everyone, so he took the roof. The landlady was kind enough to give him an extra blanket to sleep on.

"It's the least I can do for you boys." she said.

He studied the little brownie-box camera. It was a gift, left to him by a dying comrade. Poor guy died not even a day before the news of peace broke out.

She came up the side of the building, almost like she could walk on air, and somehow he wasn't surprised.

"Are you happy now, Alex?" she asked.

"Now that you're here, yes." He answered.

"I…" she stuttered a little, for the first time since he had met her. "I'll miss you."

He looked up. "Where are you going once the War's over?"

"Nowhere good." she replied. "but I'm glad to hear that you're happy."

"Do you think that we'll see each other again?" He asked.

"I don't think so." she answered honestly. "I wish that I could, though."

He looked down at the camera. Suddenly, he jerked it up to snap a quick picture of her, as though she would disappear if he didn't take it right away. She was clearly surprised, but actually seemed pretty happy about it. She said nothing, though. They just sat there, legs dangling off of the roof, the tall, lanky blond boy in uniform and the girl in the suit, Dark Red now instead of Immaculate White, with the long black hair and rust colored eyes.

"Hey." she said.

He looked up.

"I knew that we probably wouldn't see each other again, so…" she looked a little shy. "I got you a going-away present."

"Oh. I-uh- I didn't…."

"I know. That's okay." she said.

She held his face in her hands. "I can't make the scar go away completely, but I can make it a lot better than it is."

"And…" she said, taking off her hat and unbuttoning her jacket, "I want to do just one thing before I give you my gift…"

She showed him so many things that night. Things that he'd never forget.

When Alex got home, He was never the same. He didn't get older as fast as other people his age, although since he didn't have many attachments, no one really noticed. It took him thirty years to finally grow something close to a beard.

He did need glasses eventually, and the scar didn't completely go away, but he was a lot stronger. Faster. He could hear better. Overall, it wasn't bad.

He still wasn't a hero. But he was okay with that.

It was a long time before he finally made a friend, an altar boy named Renaldo. Alex came more and more to the church, spending more and more time there.

He finally read the burnt book with "The" on the cover. He liked it.

One day, he did become a priest. He believed, because something had touched him, deep inside, long ago.

He knew what she really was. He knew that she wasn't really the angel that he thought of her as, but what he did know was that even in the deepest of darkness, he had found love. And the picture that he kept slipped in the liner of the old leather book, and a faded scar on his cheek, were his only reminders of that long ago dream that had given him so much.

When he was happy, he spent time with his charges, the young children who needed someone in their lives. When he was angry, he went to the church to show himself that whatever it was, it wasn't that big of a problem that he couldn't deal with it.

But there wasn't a word for the way that he felt, late at night, when he was the only one awake, sitting on the edge of the roof with his leather bound bible, staring at the picture and waiting for someone who he knew would never come.

He cried sometimes, to himself. But the memory is the best part of love, and as long as he still remembered, he was happy.

Addenum: I would just like to clarify that in my story, GirlyCard is a part of Alucard's personality, not simply him in a new body. This isn't AxA _exactly. it's Young Alex and Girlycard. It's that simple. _

_Not that I have anything against slash fiction, (I read a lot of it and I will probably write some of my own) or that particular pairing, but this is something different. _


End file.
